Jenny answered the door with downcast eyes, and nodded.
“Mrs. Garrett,” Bolles said. “She is not home then?”
“No,” Jenny said. “She won’t be back for some time.”
Bolles ascended the steps to Senator Garrett’s room, for the senator, Jenny informed him, was still too weak to receive visitors in his study. The staircase creaked before Bolles stepped onto the second landing. The hallway was unlit, save for the cracked door toward the end.
Bolles knocked, but there was no answer.
“Senator?” the inspector said.
Again—no answer. Perhaps the old man had fallen asleep.
Bolles pressed the door forward, slowly, as to avoid making any noise, but preventing that kind of thing was impossible in a house such as this. Bolles at once saw the senator—in a chair by the window. A dull gray light was coating Senator Garrett with a soft and luminous glow.
“Senator?” Bolles repeated.
Garrett opened his eyes, and shifted.
“Ah, Montgomery,” he said.
And he breathed heavily, and turned toward the window.
There was a chair near the senator, and Inspector Bolles sat down in it. The attack had ravaged Garrett—it had aged him many years.
“Senator,” Bolles said, “it is good to see you recovering. I understand from Jenny that you are growing stronger by the day?”
“Stronger …” Garrett whispered. “Yes … stronger.”
“Senator, I—”
But that quickly the weakened Garrett held up one of his hands. Even in this pathetic state, he could still command that old power.
“I know why you have come, Montgomery,” he said.
“You do, sir?”
“I do. You have come to arrest me … and it is just as well. This old man has evaded his punishment for far too long.”
“Senator!” Bolles exclaimed. “What nonsense are you speaking? I have come to do nothing of the kind.”
Senator Garrett stared at Inspector Bolles with the glazed eyes of a man who wasn’t there. Then he turned his head again, and cast his eyes out onto the square.
“It was you,” Garrett said. “It was always you.”
“I don’t know what you mean, sir.”
“The one who would do—right.”
“Sir?”
“Not us,” Garrett said. “It could never be any of us. We were all too weak. I was too weak, but you …”
And he stopped, for his breath was beginning to catch in his throat.
“Senator,” Bolles said, “I have come to give you this.”
The glass panes in the old window frame shivered in the wind. The gray light made the rest of the room inanimate and colorless.
Garrett moved his eyes to look at what rested in Bolles’s hands. There it was. At last, by god—there it was.
The inspector did not move … and the senator could not move. For a long time Senator Garrett sat looking at the leather case. It was rough—almost crude. It was an ugly thing to carry.
Finally Bolles addressed him.
“You do know what this is, sir?”
“I do,” the senator replied.
“I have taken great—”
“You have taken a great risk,” the senator interrupted. “Your career, Montgomery … the risk you have taken. I cannot say that I—”
“That is not what I was going to say, sir,” Bolles interjected. “I have taken great pains to see that no one knows about this.”
“No one knows?” Garrett said. “What exactly do you mean?”
“I took it from Moody myself,” Bolles replied. “No one else knows that I have it.”
The senator’s eyes had by this time filled with tears. But of course, there was no chance that he would cry.
“Montgomery, I—”
“Say nothing else, Senator. I do not need to know.”
Garrett made to protest, but Bolles held up his own hand this time. Garrett retreated back into the chair, for at that moment, he had become the child.
Bolles handed the case to Garrett.
“For you, sir,” he said. “To do with as you will.”
Garrett took the stiff object from the young man. How Montgomery had grown from the little boy he had once known. He had changed, this boy. He would be such a fine citizen in this world. Montgomery was the promise of the nation.
“You have …” Garrett said, “You have … brought her back to me.”
He sighed, and lifted one hand to his lips.
“And … you have not judged.”
“Sir?” Bolles said.
And it was only then that Garrett realized that the inspector knew, but did not know.
“Judged,” Garrett repeated.
The case was warm in his hands.
“Senator—” Bolles said, “you should know that nothing else will ever come of this. We are nearing a conviction of the spirit photographer, and all of this will soon be buried.”
“Yes … buried …” Garrett intoned.
But he had already gone far, far away.
Boston Daily Journal
Boston, Massachusetts
Friday, August 19, 1870
THE MOODY EXAMINATION CONTINUED—P. T. BARNUM, ESQ., ON THE STAND
Mr. Appleton—How long have you been acquainted with Mr. Moody by reputation in connection with the production of these spirit photographs?
Witness—I think it is five or six years since I first heard of Mr. Moody as the original spirit photographer.
Mr. Appleton—Did you have any correspondence with Mr. Moody on the subject of spirit photographs?
Witness—There was correspondence between us, but I think the letters were burnt in the fire at the Museum.
Mr. Appleton—State the evidence of their contents.
Witness—I was about to write a book representing the humbugs of the world, and I wrote Mr. Moody that I was going to expose the humbug of spirit photographs, and that I wished to purchase specimens of his so-called spirit photographs for the Museum; I bought a number, giving $2 a piece for them, and they were hung on the walls of the Museum for over a year; among them were the so-called spiritual appearances of Napoleon Bonaparte and Henry Clay, and the positions of the figures were exactly like the well-known engravings of these personages.
Mr. Appleton—Have you yourself ever had a spirit photograph taken?
Witness—I went some days ago to Mr. Bogardus’s gallery and asked him if he could take a spirit photograph, telling him that I did not want any humbug about it; he said he could do it; I examined the glass and discovered nothing in it; I saw the process of pouring over the first liquid, and afterward the pouring over of nitrate of silver, and then saw it placed in the camera; when done it had my likeness and the shadow of Abraham Lincoln; I saw the ghost of Lincoln as soon as it was developed in the dark room; I was unconscious of any spiritual presence.
Cross-examined:I have never been in any humbug business, where I did not give value for the money; these spirit photographs were clearly labeled “humbug” on the walls of my Museum.
Q: So your “wooly horse” then, Mr. Barnum … was not a fraud before the public?
A: The wooly horse was a remarkable curiosity; it was exactly what I represented it to be, having a peculiar form and curled hair; it was exactly a wooly horse; it was not a horse “wooled over.”
Q: And Joice Heth, whom you claim to have been the nurse of George Washington … a woman of 161 years in age, and owned by the general’s father. Did you believe she was the person you represent her to be?
A: I have no belief about it. I bought her as such, as the bill of sale has never been disproved. I bought her and paid $1,000 for her, but before she got through to me I might have had some little doubt upon the subject. (Laughter.)
Q: Was this doubt ever suggested to the public?
A: I never put myself out of the way about it. (Laughter.)
XLIV
IT WAS NOT funny. None of it was fun
ny. And yet people were finding the space to laugh. Elizabeth sat upright, the large pages of the paper spread before her. She did not want to see any of this, and yet she could not look away.
They had been trying him for the criminal he was—rightly so. But little did they know what the real crime had been. He had dared to resurrect what should have been dead: in that offense lay the crime.
Elizabeth stood. She was tired of the testimonies, tired of the trial, tired of everything. She wanted it to go away … for Edward Moody to go away. She hoped that they would sentence him, and that all of it would disappear.
Upstairs, the hallway was quiet—too quiet. For the last few days her husband had been regaining more of his strength. He was “recovering”—a word the doctors liked to use repeatedly, but one that she knew was not quite appropriate. Her husband would never recover from what had happened. She seemed to be the only one who understood that.
Quiet. It was never a good sign when the house had that much quiet. The house had taught her to be wary of it—to fear it even.
Then the creak … and a door. Jenny emerged from Garrett’s room.
What had Jenny done? Jenny stared back at Elizabeth. The woman of the house in Elizabeth could never comprehend why Jenny despised her so much. But there were those deeper relationships whose meanings Elizabeth intimately understood—relationships that time could never change. Jenny hated Elizabeth, and there was nothing Elizabeth could ever do about it. The natural order of things—that’s simply how it was.
“Ma’am,” Jenny said.
Her look was firm—and cold.
But there was something else there, and Elizabeth could see it. Jenny wasn’t so smart after all.
“Jenny, you’ve been crying. What’s the matter?”
“Thank you ma’am, it’s nothing.”
“Jenny—”
“The senator.”
And with that Jenny bowed her head and disappeared from the second floor.
She had been in there. That impudent thing had been in there. What could she possibly have been doing?
Elizabeth approached Garrett’s door, for she had abandoned the room since the incident. That infernal spirit photographer, and everything he had drummed up, would soon be banished—sent away.
“James,” Elizabeth said.
He was staring out the window, not moving.
“James?” she repeated.
But still, he did not look at her.
“Elizabeth,” he said. “Come here. Come sit with me.”
Gentle—he was gentle. The way he once was—before the war. The voice was almost unrecognizable. She had not heard it in a very long time.
She sat before him. The light from the window had waxed his weary expression. Or maybe something else had altered it. There had been so much. Everything was gray—the sky, the air, the dull light that bathed him. He was awash in gray … but also in something else. What was it, she wondered. Could his sorrow be everywhere now?
He looked at her, and she glanced down to see what was in his hand. And all at once the air was stifling.
“Where did you get that?” she asked him.
Garrett did not reply.
Then her chest tightened, and she demanded:
“How exactly did you get that?”
“It does not matter how I got it,” Garrett replied. “There is little that matters anymore.”
So this is what it had come down to. Jenny’s impudence … Jenny’s maliciousness. Jenny had given him William’s rattle. For years, Jenny had been set on torturing her.
“These negroes,” Elizabeth whispered.
“It is not the negroes!” Garrett fumed. “It’s you!”
The rattle gleamed as he held it—a silver coin in the mud of his hand. It was out of place, this rattle, in the dullness of Garrett’s room.
The child had loved Isabelle. Her husband had loved Isabelle. She could never forgive Isabelle for that crime.
Or him—
“You brought this upon all of us,” she said. “That’s what you’ve never been able to see.”
And at last the severity fell from Garrett’s face, as he tried to choke back his own feeling.
“I have seen that, Elizabeth. I have seen it, better than anyone.”
“You’ve tried to deny it,” Elizabeth said, “just as I have tried. But there is no denying this any longer. I am sorry, James. Truthfully, I am sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Do?” Garrett said.
“Yes, James—do!” Elizabeth said. “I had to do something. You were young. Your career. I know how these women think! Something had to be done before it was too late. And so I …”
Elizabeth paused. She had never even thought the words.
“And so I got rid of her.”
“Elizabeth!” Garrett exclaimed.
“I got rid of her, James. For you … for us! And I lost him, James. I lost my child—our child. It was the punishment for what I did.”
She reached her hand out toward him—toward the rattle in his hand. But then, through her tears …
The rattle was no longer there.
The rattle was a teaspoon.
A teaspoon—William’s teaspoon! How the boy had loved to use it. Stewed apples or porridge or warm milk mixed with cornmeal. His delicate little fingers still there, around the handle. How proud he had been of using it, before he had lost his will to eat.
“I see you have it,” Elizabeth said.
Garrett did not reply. He was looking down at something now. Nothing made a difference anymore.
“Yes, James,” Elizabeth said. “I paid the vile creature—with our silver. I paid him to take her away. I gave him everything—but that.”
Garrett was turning the spoon over in his hands. It was so bright that he needed to look away from it.
“The girl—” Garrett said.
“I don’t know,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t know. But what does it matter? I tried, and I failed. And now everyone will see.”
“I don’t know that I ever tried …” Garrett said.
“You didn’t have to. I did it for you.”
The spoon remained quiet, and the light upon it remained a thing of beauty. She would not tell him of the other times—the many other times over the years—when she had done things for him, and kept them from him.
This was the end then. There was no place left to go.
“I still miss him,” Elizabeth said. “It never stops.”
Garrett looked at his wife. How beautiful she still was. The ugliness of her actions had not diminished her physical beauty. The lines around her eyes now—even those were beautiful. What had gone so wrong between the two of them, that he had lost sight of who she was?
“Elizabeth—” he said, his body bent forward.
“Say nothing, James,” she said. “Say nothing.”
JENNY SAT IN her room on the top floor of the great house. She felt no guilt over what she had just done. Senator Garrett was a wonderful man—he had saved her! And he deserved to know. For nearly twenty years she had held on to the secret—not out of spite, or even malice, but out of respect for what the house had given her. These matters were always tricky … what to tell, and what not to. And of course, when to tell what needed to be told.
She had had no intentions of doing it that day, but the time had come, and the house would absolve her. There was guilt over not just what she knew, but what she herself had done so many years ago. She felt justified then, because she had been so jealous of Isabelle, though that emotion was also something that she rarely owned up to.
The missus had dropped the spoon in her haste to collect the silver. Jenny had found it hiding on the floor, beneath one of the shelves at the back of the pantry. She had picked it up and looked at it—it was still mysterious to her in that moment. And then she returned it to the place where it had been, because she knew that Mrs. Garrett would come back for it.
It was confusing at first, but the spoon was wh
at eventually told Jenny everything.
For what reason Mrs. Garrett had to use the silver, Jenny did not understand, because Mrs. Garrett could have easily acquired the money to pay for the horrible thing herself. It was that most malicious part of Mrs. Garrett that likely drove her to use the silver—an added “detail” that would give Isabelle’s disappearance the air of something everyone expected.
“She took the silver when she left,” Mrs. Garrett had said to her husband. “That ungrateful negress took the silver.”
And that’s when Jenny knew. That is when the whole crime flashed before her.
It was convenient—to blame the negroes. It was a trick that always worked.
For years Mrs. Garrett had carried around that spoon—like a baby. Hiding it in places … talking to it. The spoon had been the boy’s spoon, and there was certainly something to its escaping. The spoon hadn’t wanted to go, Jenny thought. It had been determined to stay in the house.
The spoon had cursed Mrs. Garrett, and Jenny could see that. Sometimes the spoon was so poorly concealed that Jenny thought it had come out on its own.
“They are one thing before the whites,” Mrs. Garrett had once said to a small audience, “and another before their own color. It is a habit—a long established custom that descends from generation to generation.”
Of course that had been ages ago, and Mrs. Garrett hadn’t said such things in years. But Jenny had never forgotten, and those words rang in her ears like songs. Mrs. Garrett had the makings of the cruelest plantation mistress. Dressing her up in Boston finery did not change the tiger’s stripes.
And then there was the spoon, which might never have fallen, or found its own way to the floor rather, if Jenny hadn’t said anything in the first place. Yes, Jenny had been the one to call Mrs. Garrett’s attention to Isabelle’s condition, though in the end Mrs. Garrett would likely have seen it on her own. But in those days, there was something cruel that lived within Jenny, too—something that screamed out for justice, something that wanted to make Isabelle suffer. And so Jenny had offered this business about Isabelle eating “enough for more than herself.” It might cause some trouble—speed things along a little—but surely there was no harm in that.
The Spirit Photographer Page 28